As the art of life is learned, it will be found at last that all lovely things are also necessary: - the wild flower by the wayside, as well as the tended corn; and the wild birds and creatures of the forest, as well as the tended cattle; because man doth not live by bread only, but also by the desert manna; by every wondrous word and unknowable work of God

I am trying to prove to you the honour of your houses and your hills; not that the Church is not sacred -- but that the whole Earth is.

The truths of nature are one eternal change, one infinite variety. There is no bush on the face of the globe exactly like another bush; there are no two trees in the forest whose boughs bend into the same network, nor two leaves on the same tree which could not be told one from the other, nor two waves in the sea exactly alike.

There is no climate, no place, and scarcely an hour, in which nature does not exhibit color which no mortal effort can imitate or approach. For all our artificial pigments are, even when seen under the same circumstances, dead and lightless beside her living color; nature exhibits her hues under an intensity of sunlight which trebles their brilliancy.

Nature is always mysterious and secret in her use of means; and art is always likest her when it is most inexplicable.

Sunshine is delicious, rain is refreshing, wind braces us up, snow is exhilarating; there is really no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather.

You cannot get anything out of nature or from God by gambling; only out of your neighbor.